Thad -

It's obvious that you are talking about www.pente.net as the OTHER site that currently has no-restriction Pente.

I saw it about 2 years ago and created an I.D. But when I saw their 'ranking' system that consisted of multiplying a player's total wins by 100 and adding their winning percentage, the fact that they have NO time controls AT ALL, AND the fact that they have NO tournaments, I dismissed it as a small mom & pop operation that will stay the way it is.

Two things that I will say about their rating system:
1. Why bother adding the winning %? Effectively the main sort is by total # of wins. Obviously this breaks ties if 2 players have 538 wins each, but if one player has played 2000 games and the other 550 games at that point, they certainly shouldn't be near one another.
2. If they just want to use something simple like that, why not just take a players winning percentage, multiply THAT by 100 or 1000 and add a player's TOTAL wins. That would be JUST as easy and would show players that have BOTH a combination of playing lots of games BUT winning a high percentage of them. Why don't you make that suggestion to them? It would take the owner virtually NO time to implement such a change compared to the significant changes needed to handle the U.S. Chess rating system (a slight variation thereof) that is used here at Brain King.

I then checked on the site again about a year ago to see if any improvements had been made and it stated that the site was down 'indefintely' or something of the nature but expected to be back up in X # of months or something. I then checked back 2 or 3 times over the next 3-5 months and it continued to state the same thing.

Since that was the last time that I checked on the site, I think you can see why I would not COUNT it as a WORKING site. Any WORKING site should not be down for months at a time.

When I saw your message, I thought I would check it out once again to see if any improvements have been made. It appears that they have, but ONLY to have a couple of other 5-in-a-row games like Gomoku, other small things like viewing a players won-lost records, and to continue stating that their 'ranking' system needs to be improved, but not doing anything about it.

I'm sure that this site is 'fun' for it's core group of 750+ players and that the personal attention that you get from the owner is kind of cool. But until it expands to other games than just Pente, starts selling memberships and/or advertising, and starts having tournaments, it will remain a VERY small operation.

So if you want Pente to REMAIN small potatoes, continue frequenting sites like that where the rankings are effectively calculated by the # of wins that a players has and there are NO tourneys. But if you want to be where all of the FUTURE action WILL be, then you'll need to look elsewhere.

I WILL state that such a site is of little consequence as far as I'm concerned and I'm sure as far as MOST other serious players would be concerned, so you will NOT see us making any suggestions there.

I hope that removes any concerns that you have about that.


Gary